The dust had barely settled from this past week's 2006 elections, when Clinton/DLC loyalists, using James Carville as their mouthpiece, started calling for the ouster of DNC chairman Howard Dean. Carville's claim is that Dean did not spend enough money targeting specific races and was wrongly intent on spreading the money around in a fifty state strategy. He is spearheading a movement to replace the progressive Dean as DNC chairman with the centerist Harold Ford Jr., who needs a job after losing the Tennessee Senator's race. The DLC led Clinton Folks, Carville, Begala, Rahm Emanuel, .etc never wanted Dean as chairman in the first place. They think the future of the Democratic Party is as a centerist party, a more moderate version of the Republicans. To that end, a number of the candidates who the DCCC and DSCC ran this year, to the consternation of Dean's people at the DNC, were centerist and conservative candidates (Tester in Montana, former reaganite Jim Webb in Virginia, pro-life Casey in Pennsylvania, conservative heath shuler in north carolina .etc)

Howard Dean came to the DNC looking to build a national progressive movement around the party's base. The whole point of his candidacy in 2004 was that the party was losing its identity because after losing for years it was trying too hard to look and sound like republicans. His candidacy represented the progressive heart and soul of the democratic party waking up. When Dean became DNC chairman it was a breath of fresh air, a sign that things were finally changing and that the party would stop trying to look and sound republican, and would no longer be afraid to be progressive or liberal and reflect the true values of the majority of its members.

But now it appears that Rahm Emanuel with the DCCC and Chuck Schumer with the DSCC, with the backing of the DLC, have attempted to push the party back to the right in the name of "winning" They ran democratic candidates who are pro-life, anti-gun control, hawks. They even ran some conservative candidates, like one in georgia, who support repeal of the estate tax! Howard Dean has tried to get the best candidates to run and support the best candidates, but he's been fought along the way by Emanuel and his idea that the democrats have to run republican candidates in the red states to win. Now Emanuel and Carville and co. are tired of fighting with Howard. They want him out, so they can get the centerist Harold Ford in and continue pushing the party to the right.

This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and it is one that the progressive wing of the party may not be able to win from within. Not if they force out the guy who is in there fighting our fight. I think we ought to lobby the DNC members not to force Howard out, that we want a party that reflects our progressive values. But if Carville and co. DO succeed in forcing Howard out as chairman, and get their own guy in who would implicitly back pushing the party to the center-right, the only alternative would be to fight this from the outside. Which means Howard Dean, if this happens, ought to go right back to Vermont and announce he's running for President again. Setting up Dean vs. Hillary in the primary season, in a battle for the ideological direction of the party. Dean representing the 'democratic wing' of the democratic party and Hillary and the DLC the 'republican wing' We cannot let the progressive movement we've been building these last few years be hijacked by centerists who want to take advantage of our success to move the party to the right. Why have a democratic party if it runs republican candidates?

even though one of the Democrats was a turncoat who changed parties when he got in.

The DLC's track record is abominable. They're great at misallocating resources and losing elections all over the country. Their candidates also suck and they're responsible for a lot of the conservative dead wood in the Senate.

Progressives can win in areas that have been written off as too conservative to win. Brian Schweitzer, governor of Montana is a great example of it, as is Rocky Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City.

Conservatives are the problem. There is no way they can ever be part of the solution.

4. I think it was the success of that 50 state strategy that DLCers like Emmanuel hate most.

They don't want to push a progressive agenda, they want to play politics in the Good Ol' Boys' Club. Split the vote in the usual ways, along the usual, agreed-upon, focus group-tested issues, and make sure the incumbents remain the incumbents, regardless of party affiliation.

The fiscally conservative but socially liberal Rockefeller Republicans were successfully ousted from the official Republican Party by the religious conservatives. Under the rubric of the DLC, these socially liberal, but corporate rooted Republicans, undertook to take over the Democratic Party and, in 2008, were hugely successful in electing their stealth candidate, President Obama, using the hard work and enormous energy of Democratic progressives to do so. It is no wonder that Obama panders to Republicans and has filled his cabinet with representatives of the corporatist interests. He is one. The socially liberal Republicans have taken power and now want to thoroughly demolish progressive Democrats so their corporate benefactors can continue to thrive on corporate-driven policies.

Governor Dean, a true Democrat, re-vitalized the Democratic Party as DNC chair in 2005 to 2008, only to watch Obama and corporate friends turn it into a fund-raising appendage to the DLC while carrying out a corporate Republican agenda. We got Governor Dean elected to DNC chair once. We can do it again. Governor Dean is needed to lead the fight for Democratic values and policies. Time to kick out the Rockefeller Republicans from power and restore real Democrats to power in the Democratic Party and in the nation.

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